JF Mezei wrote on Mon, 21 May 2018
14:19:08 -0400:

On 2018-05-21 06:37, Jeff Findley wrote:

ULA isn't working on anything ground breaking to compete with SpaceX.
They just can't. It's not in their corporate DNA anymore to actually
innovate. They've been doing launch operations for far too long while
their development staff atrophied, retired, or simply went to work for
another company.

This is from Wikipedia:

##
United Launch Alliance has further stated, back in 2015, that they must
win both "commercial and civil space flight contracts" in addition to US
government military missions, or they would be forced to go out of
business. [22]
##


They must but they probably won't. Target price for the base Vulcan
is $99 million. So they're building something designed to cut Atlas
prices in half that will still be more expensive than Falcon Heavy.


As a joint venture, the corporate DNA is infused by its 2 owners. And
the 2 owners would inject more capital for new projects if it is decided
it was good business. Boeing and I assume Lockheed also have a lot of
their own intellectual IP and engineers that can be transfered to ULA if
needed. (in particular composite use).


An engineer is NOT an engineer.


Since landing rockets is new tech. Not having engineers experienced in
landing rockets didn't stop SpaceX from developping, testing, failing
and eventually succeeding.


Almost anything can be developed given enough time. Do you have a
point?


Vulcan was started in 2014, before SpaceX had a proven record of
landing/reusing stages. One could argue that they decided their partial
re-use was more realistic than SpaceX' fancyfull plan of landing and
reusing whole stages.


Except they're not doing that until later, either. Vulcan first
flight will be in a couple of years. It will be fully expendable.


SpaceX proved them wrong, and ULA now stuck with a half baked plan,
which would have been a big advancement had SpaceX failed, but is now
too little too late.


Note that ESA has the same 'half baked plan'.


Boeing/Lockheed CEOs will have a few lunches together to decide whether
to sink more money into ULA to make it a viable competitor, or whether
to throw in the towel. At the end of the day, they report to
shareholders and unless additional investment in ULA is going to bring
better return on investment than investing elsewhere, they will jst let
UAL continue to sell their legacy launches until nobody buys them.


They're trying to get government money to fund it.


BUT, if they decide to stay in the launch business, don't be surprised
if they tell their engineers to work with a reusable stage. They may not
say this publicy until engineers are close enough to a solution.


I would be astonished, not surprised.


One blurb I read is that Vulcan is to re-use the Delta IV fuselage
diametre and PRODUCTION PROCESS. They may have to design a new fuselage
from scratch if they want it to be re-usable and that may have been the
cost saving measure which prevents true re-usability.


That's only true if they decide to go with the AR1 engine. If they go
with the BE-4, the stage will have to be bigger around.


The "use helicopters to catch falling engines" isn't gonna work reliably.


Oh, really? You know how we used to get film back from reconnaissance
satellites, don't you?


Since Vulcan is going to use BE-4 engines from Blue Origin, won't those
engines be inherently re-usable (both for multiple uses and for multiple
ignitions per flight) ?


Rephrase that to MAY be going to use BE-4 engines. It's not decided
yet, is it?


So ULA's owners would now have to decide whether to cut their losses on
Vulcan project or invest and make it reusable. Note that it has been
delayed by a year so this ~could~ be because of skunkworks to develop a
reusable stage fuselage needing more time.


Or the delay COULD be due to waiting for both candidate engines to be
ready and complete testing, which is actually the case.


If you'd been paying attention you'd know that SpaceX has been
developing GPS based range safety.

Removing pad limits does not remove processing limits. It may allow
launch rate to increase but only until it hits the processing limits. A
freshly landed stage still needs to cool down, moved to the assembly
building where stage2/payload/fairing is attached.


SpaceX thinks they can do that in less than a day.


Adding "assembly lines" in the assembly building to process multiple
rockets at same time would solve that. But again, it depends on how
much processing is needed for re-used stages.


That's the reason for Block 5. Assuming they see what they expect
when they tear down their latest launch, the answer is 'none' for most
flights.


BTW, what does SpaceX intend to stop bringing stages back to Hawthorne
for refurb and just have the stages live on the Florida coast? I assume
this would represent a big cost savings.


That's the plan, but the big cost saving is not needing to do anything
to them after a launch, so you just restack, refuel, and launch again.


for a high launch cadence. 2018 is already shaping up to be the highest
launch cadence for the company ever.

I don't doubt it. They have much room to increase it, but that doesn't
mean they can instantly move to launching within 24 hours of landing.


Not 'instantly', but not all that far away, either.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw